Grow a Pair

Be brave. Even if you are not brave, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.

Courage is one of those funny things in a man's life. As you get older, it changes. That is to say, what you think of as courage changes.

When I was nineteen, I jumped out of an airplane a couple of times. I am also a wee bit scared of heights, so it did take some courage. I do remember being scared shitless, sitting in the open door of a tiny Cessna with the wind screaming in my ear and every animal instinct demanding that I not let go. I suppose you could argue that it was less courage than peer pressure that got me out of the plane, because my other two buddies had already jumped and I wasn't about to wuss out.

Six years later, I found myself in a dusty street in Pampalona without any buddies. They had decided to just observe the running of the bulls, while I could not imagine coming all the way to the festival of San Fermin and not participating. However, I was not actually alone, as anyone who has ever run the bulls in Pamaplona will tell you. The street is jam packed with people. In fact it is so crowded that I never even saw a bull until the very end, yet I ran as fast and hard as I could when caught up in the panic of the crowd. There was no brave facing down El Toro.. just the madness of the crowd and the wild run of adrenaline. I suppose you could put that down to recklessness, rather than courage.

There have been other scrapes and stand offs and fear for personal safety.. the kind of thing that happens to most guys. Sometimes you are really scared and do your best not to show it (as my father told me: just pretend to be brave.. no one can tell the difference). Sometimes you just act in the heat of the moment, and then later pull your car over and shake uncontrollably for a few minutes while your mind and body relive what just happened.

There's a Mr. Death from the village..

And then there is the time when you have to face The Fear. It is the time when your realize that you are eventually going to die. Or when your realize that you have fewer years left to live than you have already lived. Or when someone you identify with dies. You feel The Fear. Your mortality. The ultimate pointlessness of your time on the planet. The end of everything. The Fear.

Unlike the adrenaline rush of dangerous situations, The Fear is endemic. It never goes away and it seems to get stronger every year. You wake up with it every morning, lurking in your thinning hair and stiff back and creaking joints. It can make you do some crazy ass things.. the stereotypical mid-life crisis is another manifestation of The Fear. I think men in general have a harder time of it because they generally are a lot more tight-arsed when it comes to showing deep emotions. We keep The Fear bottled up inside us, and refuse to speak of the thing so we don't have to acknowledge it.

I think this is where courage comes into play. Accepting the inevitable and persevering. Being determined to fight the good fight even though you will lose in the end. Maybe even using it as motivation to get more out of every day rather than just going through the motions.

I used to think that courage was not flinching in the face of danger. Now I know it is just living your life and managing Fear.

Shine on, brother.

Growing Up - Me or Them?

Like a surprising number of guys my age, I had kids pretty late in life compared to my father. He was in his strong-and-ambitious mid 20's when my sister was born, and I was born a year or so later. By contrast, I was almost 40 when my first daughter was born. So I am an Old Dad, as the saying goes (NOTE: it is mostly the stay at home moms who say that). Fortunately, I'm in good company.

Maybe all we late blooming families are part of the Generation X phenomena. Before you get all spun up about the term Generation X, let me clarify: I mean the people who entered the workforce in the mid to late 80's during a crappy economy and paradigm-shifting technological (and managerial) change. Kind of like today's graduates from college and university. It took a lot of us a while to get our careers sorted out, and many of us have had several different careers... something our fathers would have looked down on but we practiced as a matter of survival.

So it took us a while to get comfortable enough and (let's be honest) wealthy enough to afford a family. And we by-and-large married educated career women who were in the same boat as us and in truth weren't all that keen to throw four years of post-secondary education out with a stack of soiled diapers. They wanted to work and earn some money (or rather, pay off their student loans) too.

But that is only part of the story. I know guys who had kids when they were young.. guys who are now in their 50's.. who are having babies again. In some cases, it is part of a second marriage. In other cases, it just seems to be because they can. With older kids almost out of the house and two spouses working, you can afford to have a baby. Medical science has progressed well enough that it is nowhere near as risky for a woman to have a child in her late 30's or even 40's as it was even ten years ago.

But as I tell my kids - just because you can eat crayons, it doesn't mean you should.

At some point, you have to wonder just how much of this is ego. And I don't mean just the men, either. Women are sadly cursed with conflicting albatrosses of Motherhood ('to be truly fulfilled') and Independence ('my own woman') . So I get it that there is a lot of emotional content at play here.

Whatever the reason, once you got 'em.. they're yours. You gotta raise 'em. I am more fortunate than most in that I have a strong streak of immaturity that will help me stay youthful :)

It is very important to me that I enjoy my kids. I don't just mean the idea of my kids. I mean, my real kids.. their daily lives, the funny things they say, the emergence of their real characters. I guard against putting them in a category in my mind, like I put yard work or tax calculations. Things that are necessary and maybe even enjoyable, but are essentially work.

My kids are not work.

They take effort and time, but they are not work. They are life. They are mystery and magic and terror and love and I am a better man for being with them. I want to share the magic of life with them for as long as I am permitted. In this, I am decidedly not grown-up.

Shine on, brother.

Self, how did I get here?

Sometimes I just have to wonder where it all went wrong, and then where it all went right again.

There is definitely a chain of events in our lives. One stupid act somehow begets something worthwhile, and it is shocking to think that it really does all work out in the end. Everyone has done something stupid. A few of us have done something monumentally stupid. As in 'ruining your freaking life' stupid. And still, it worked out for me. Sort of. I think.

Remember when you were a young man and you were deeply, incredibly, and somewhat tragically in love with that special girl? Remember the heart sickness and the devastation? Is it coming back? Now ask yourself where you would be if it hadn't happened. Would you be a stronger man for it, or would it have mattered at all? These are the late-night-wolf-prowling-mind-won't-stop kind of thoughts. They usually hit you late at night when you are travelling or drinking (preferable both) and have too much time on your hands. I used to have them quite a lot. I try to avoid them now. Frankly, they take too much energy, and they never made me happy anyway. In fact, it might just drive you crazy if you let it.

So here is the good news. There is a really simple way to avoid all the crazy thoughts. Are you ready? Repeat after me:

'Everything happens for a reason."

That's it. Everything happens for a reason. I suppose you could add that you won't know how it will work out until it actually does. Sorry, no peeking into the future.

A long time ago, my dad advised me to always act brave. Even if you are not brave, just pretend to be.. no one can tell the difference. He was right. And it is the same with this. Even if you don't believe that everything happens for a reason, just pretend to believe it. You'll feel better.

For me, I'm too far gone to worry about my colossal fuck-ups from a decade ago. I've got too much other stuff distracting me.. wife, two small children, stressful work, mortgage under water. But rather than let all the problems weigh me down, I do my best to remember to enjoy the ride. Because, hey.. everything happens for a reason.

Shine on, brother.